HSK5 test taken, and the experience was WEIRD!

Hi all,

I took the HSK5 test yesterday essentially just to know what the test would be like. I had not really studied properly at all, and the result may have been about 10% to 20% depending on how well I guessed at the MCQs. I often tried to get a sense of mood even if not specific content for questions.
(Summary: I'm a somewhat wasteful student, but money and opportunity cost of going to an exam are no objects to me. Plus I had passed HSK4 on 3rd attempt with my progressive mindset.)

The 5及考试 had a weird aspect, whereby after the listening section was complete, 5 minutes were expected to be spent on reviewing listening and, if the student had opted not to do this it as he/she handled each question, transcribe the answer to the mark sense sheet. One student prudently asked "我们可以花那个5分时间预习阅读部分吗？“ and the invigilator said no, it was strictly pencils down. The student asked ”不过，我愿意不写，但是还可以至少看看阅读问题吗“ and the invigilator said no.

So, when this time came, everyone was twiddling thumbs, wondering what to do with themselves. Everyone had wanted to dot the mark sense sheet as time went by and they sure as sure didn't want to second guess their answers based on audio content that was long gone into the ether. Is this a standard HSK5 experience? I did see that one person looked at the reading anyway but the invigilator turned their page back saying they had to wait.
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The other thing that was really weird was that the invigilation was all done in English. Now hear me out, I'm not a standards officer, but each of the 3 times I took the HSK4 test the mode of instruction was Chinese. This time it was all English, even when students communicated in Chinese to the overseers. It was run under the auspices of the Confucius Institute. My nation does not have an official language. Even when I told the invigilator that I was a Chinese speaker there were attempts to ignore this and it was awkward as I explained this could be nipped in the bud. If I were to socialize with the invigilator in a café I would use English as the de facto language, but this was an environment where students were highly inferably adept at Chinese well beyond a baseline, and Chinese proficiency was furthermore their aim.

I grant that the Confucius Institutes are no longer strongly supervised and have been left to run laissez-faire by whoever has kept the job after Beijing (essentially) offloaded them.

I think this is a big deal because if CI people consider it neither their job nor civic duty to advocate for Chinese communicability, they miss an opportunity to nuture the developing generation of students. It's actually discouraging, and suggestive that giving up would be fine.

Chinese language ostracism by people who actually speak Chinese is a widespread issue, perhaps worthy of its own post (though it can get very ideological, very burn-after-reading 感觉). In this context here, it would be easy to talk about.

Anyway, I hope this feedback has proven interesting. I look forward to fielding genuine responses. Thanks all!

The 5-minute hold after listening is standard, officially meant as buffer time to finish transcribing answers to the bubble sheet if you were writing on scratch paper as you went. Most people end up sitting idle because they answered directly on the sheet, but the format doesn't account for that.

The English-only invigilation at CIs outside China is frustrating but pretty common. A lot of CI staff aren't language teachers themselves and default to English regardless of the room.

Maybe it's also meant as a 5 min break after intensely rousing on listening? as for them speaking English, I'd also find that annoying. When I did the hsk 4(I haven't gotten around to 5 yet) I BJ they invigilated in Chinese.

Guess what, I learned a new word from this thread: invigilate.  I had to look it up.  In American English we use the word proctor.

On 3/23/2026 at 10:55 PM, Moshen said:

Guess what, I learned a new word from this thread: invigilate.  I had to look it up.  In American English we use the word proctor.

I didn't know what it was either.  Sounds like one of those dictionary words that technically exists but nobody uses.  Sounds like someone who needs to go to jail for being on one of those islands.

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I grant that the Confucius Institutes are no longer strongly supervised and have been left to run laissez-faire by whoever has kept the job after Beijing (essentially) offloaded them.

This happens a lot, someone will open a new program with a lot of fanfare.  It will go well for  a while but after six months or so  it falls off because nobody is tracking it.  Or it will get handed off to someone's brother-in-law who just wanted to own it but doesn't want to actually do anything with it. 

They opened this new cool district made from an old rice storage warehouse which went well for a while but fell off. Eventually found out the owner gave it to his daughter who was an artist  in New York City and wanted nothing to do with it but the money it made. It's still there but a shadow of its former self. Used to be the hottest district in town.